Search This Blog

Uzbekistan Cracks Down on Currency Traders

Elite police units in Tashkent have started rounding up and arresting black market currency dealers days after new restrictions on the circulation of foreign currency came into force, according to witnesses and media reports.

Russia's RIA Novosti news agency quotes a law-enforcement official as saying that authorities are trying to prevent the exchange rate of Uzbekistan’s national currency, the sum, from plummeting against hard currencies.

"Since it is now impossible to purchase foreign currency in cash and there is a shortage, foreign currency has sharply gone up [in value] against the local sum, and authorities have decided to eliminate everywhere the so-called 'black [market]' dealers from whom in most cases the population and business buy foreign currency," RIA Novosti cites its source as saying. "The idea is that if there are no dealers, there won't be the possibility of selling and buying foreign currency; therefore, there won't be demand and foreign currency won't grow [in value]."

Sources in Tashkent have confirmed to EurasiaNet.org that elite Interior Ministry OMON troops have indeed raided major markets in the capital, sweeping areas where black market currency dealers operate, including the Sergeli car market. For practical reasons, major items such as apartments and cars are often traded for dollars: The Uzbek sum equivalent of a few thousand dollars is so bulky that it must be transported in garbage bags or suitcases.

OMON units wearing black balaclavas detained about 20 people, including women, in a raid on the Chorsu Market in Tashkent's old town on February 1, an eyewitness told EurasiaNet.org. The suspects were put onto a bus and driven away.

Despite Tashkent’s week-old currency exchange restrictions, and contrary to some media reports, dollars are still changing hands for about 40 percent more on the streets, according to traders in the capital. On February 6, commercial banks were promising to sell one greenback for about 2,044 sum, while black market rates over the last few days have fluctuated between 2,700 and 2,900 sum to the dollar.